Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? IX. - HYMN TO MONT BLANC. - Coleridge. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star Rave ceaselessly, while thou, dread mountain form, It seems thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, O dread and silent form! I gazed on thee Till thou, still present to my bodily eye, Didst vanish from my thought. - Entranced in prayer, I worshipped the Invisible alone, Yet thou, methinks, wast working on my soul, E'en like some deep enchanting melody, So sweet we know not we are listening to it. But I awake, and with a busier mind And active will, self-conscious, offer now, Hand and voice Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake! Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink, — Who sank thy sunless pillars in the earth? Who called you forth from night and utter death? Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded and the silence came, Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven, And to thy summit upward from thy base Rise, like a cloud of incense, from the earth! When Music, heavenly maid, was young, First, Fear, his hand, its skill to try, Next, Anger rushed: his eyes on fire, In lightnings owned his secret stings: --- And swept with hurried hands the strings. With woful measures, wan Despair — A solemn, strange, and mingled air: 'Twas sad, by fits;-by starts, 't was wild. But thou, O Hope! with eyes so fair, And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close; And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair: And longer had she sung-but, with a frown, He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast, so loud and dread, The doubling drum with furious heat. And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild unaltered mien; While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed; Sad proof of thy distressful state! Of differing themes the veering song was mixed: And, now, it courted Love; now, raving, called on Hate. With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sat retired; And from her wild sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul; And, dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels joined the sound. Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, (Round a holy calm diffusing, Love of peace and lonely musing,) In hollow murmurs died away. But, oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung, The hunter's call, to Faun and Dryad known! The oak-crowned Sisters, and their chaste-eyed Queen, Peeping from forth their alleys green : Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear, And Sport leaped up, and seized his beechen spear. Last, came Joy's ecstatic trial. He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addressed; Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best. To some unwearied minstrel dancing; While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round: (Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound ;) As if he would the charming air repay, - 1 XI. THE USES OF KNOWLEDGE.-Alison. The first end to which all wisdom or knowledge ought to be employed, is to illustrate the wisdom or goodness of the Father of Nature. Every science that is cultivated by men, leads naturally to religious thought, from the study of the plant that grows beneath our feet, to that of the Host of Heaven above us, who perform their stated revolutions in majestic silence, amid the expanse of infinity. When, in the youth of Moses, "the Lord appeared to him in Horeb," a voice was heard, saying, " draw nigh hither, and put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the place where thou standest is holy ground." It is with such a reverential awe that every great or elevated mind will approach to the study of nature, and with such feelings of adoration and gratitude, that he will receive the illumination that gradually opens upon his soul. It is not the lifeless mass of matter, he will then feel, that he is examining, it is the mighty machine of Eternal Wisdom: the workmanship of Him, “in whom everything lives, and moves, and has its being." Under an aspect of this kind, it is impossible to pur 1 A few of the concluding pieces in the first edition, which were designed for the use of theological students, are now displaced by others of a more general character; as the author's new work, Pulpit Elocution, has since been prepared for the purpose of furnishing appropriate professional exercises. |